The hacker who exploited Solana-based liquidity protocol Crema Finance on July 2 returned most of the funds but was allowed to keep $1.6 million as a white hat bounty. The bounty, 45,455 Solana (SOL), is worth a generous 16.7% of the $9.6 million Crema lost initially, which forced the protocol to suspend services. Crema’s team began an investigation to identify the hacker by tracking their Discord handle and tracing the original gas source for the hacker’s address. Just as it seemed the team may have been onto the secret identity, it announced that it had been negotiating with the hacker. …

Blockchain analysis firm Glassnode recently characterized the 2022 bear market as the worst on record. This seems to be the case due to events such as the war in Ukraine and rising inflation, coupled with serious problems among centralized crypto exchanges. Yet, the bear market hasn’t negatively impacted all players in the crypto ecosystem. Hardware wallet providers seem to be benefiting from the massive amount of crypto withdrawals from centralized exchanges. Pascal Gauthier, CEO of hardware wallet crypto firm Ledger, told Cointelegraph that the company’s revenue dropped about 90% during the 2018 crypto winter, but this hasn’t been the case …

OpenSea, the world’s largest nonfungible tokens (NFT) marketplace, has issued a warning to customers after it was discovered that an employee of Customer.io, a platform for managing email newsletters and campaigns, leaked the list of OpenSea customers’ emails to an outside party. The breach has affected all of the users who have given their email to the marketplace, whether it's for the platform or its newsletter. Following the breach, OpenSea advised customers against potential phishing attempts. The NFT marketplace announced on Thursday that it has contacted law enforcement officials about the breach and that an investigation is in progress. An …

The Harmony layer-1 blockchain project team has offered a bounty equal to just 1% of the $100 million in crypto stolen from the Horizon Bridge hack last week. Harmony tweeted on June 26 that the team had committed $1 million for the return of the funds that were stolen from the Horizon Bridge on Thursday. It added, “Harmony will advocate for no criminal charges when funds are returned.” We commit to a $1M bounty for the return of Horizon bridge funds and sharing exploit information. Contact us at [email protected] or ETH address 0xd6ddd996b2d5b7db22306654fd548ba2a58693ac. Harmony will advocate for no criminal charges …

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has launched a hotline that will accept reports o incidents of hackers demanding cryptocurrency payments from platforms or companies. In a Wednesday blog post, Chainalysis said its "Crypto Incident Response" hotline would operate 24/7 for victims of a “hack, ransomware attack, code exploit or flash loan attack” in which “cryptocurrency funds are either demanded or stolen.” The company attributed the launch of the reporting service on crypto-related ransomware attacks presenting “national security concerns” as well as potentially undermining confidence in the crypto industry. According to Chainalysis, hackers were responsible for the loss of more than $3 …

Just two months after losing $15.6 million in a price oracle manipulation exploit, Inverse Finance has again been hit with a flash loan exploit that saw the attackers make off with $1.26 million in Tether (USDT) and Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC). Inverse Finance is an Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol and a flash loan is a type of crypto loan that is usually borrowed and returned within a single transaction. Oracles report outside pricing information. The latest exploit worked by using a flash loan to manipulate the price oracle for a liquidity provider (LP) token used by the protocol’s money market …

On Wednesday, MetaMask said that it uncovered a critical security vulnerability in older versions of its crypto wallet with the help of security researchers at Halborn. The security firm was awarded a bounty of $50,000 for the discovery. For users of the MetaMask extension before version 10.11.3, three necessary conditions would have led to the potential vulnerability.: 1) an unencrypted hard drive; 2) having imported a secret recovery phrase into a MetaMask extension on a device that was compromised, stolen, or has unauthorized access; and 3) having used the "Show Secret Recovery Phrase" checkbox to view one's secret recovery phrase …

Hardware cryptocurrency wallets are known for granting users full control of their crypto and providing more security, but such wallets are prone to risks such as theft, destruction or loss. Does that mean that all your Bitcoin (BTC) is lost forever if your hardware wallet is lost, burned or stolen? Not at all. There are a number of options to restore cryptocurrency for someone who has lost access to their hardware wallet. The only requirement to recover crypto assets, in that case, would be maintaining access to the private keys. A private key is a cryptographic string of letters and …

One of the most popular crypto startups, OpenSea, has recently come under fire for stolen and plagiarized nonfungible tokens (NFTs). In light of the growing number of NFT scams, OpenSea has announced the launch of a new feature that will automatically hide suspicious NFT transfers from view on their marketplace. This will help to protect users from being scammed and ensure that only legitimate transactions are visible. According to a blog post on Monday, the new feature will automatically conceal suspicious NFT transfers to address key concerns around trust and safety on OpenSea. OpenSea has recently been focusing on enhancing …

Ripple general counsel Stu Alderoty has slammed the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for trying to “bully, bulldoze, and bankrupt” crypto innovation in the U.S. in the name of expanding its own regulatory territory: “By bringing enforcement actions–or threats of potential enforcement–the SEC intends to bully, bulldoze, and bankrupt crypto innovation in the U.S., all in the name of impermissibly expanding its own jurisdictional limits.” Alderoty shared his views on Monday amid an ongoing lawsuit between Ripple and the regulator, which he says is part of the “SEC’s assault on all crypto in the U.S.” by treating every …

Bitcoin (BTC) hash rate, a network security measure based on computing power for mining, achieved a new all-time high (ATH) of 231.428 exahash per second (EH/s) amid an ongoing bear market that witnesses BTC price plunging below the critical $25,000 mark. Hash rate is directly proportional to the computing power of mining equipment for confirming transactions, which deters bad actors from manipulating on-chain transactions. Complimenting the new hash rate ATH, the Bitcoin network difficulty stands at a strong position of 30.283 trillion. Some of the most popular Bitcoin mining pools based on market share include Poolin, AntPool, F2Pool, ViaBTC and …

Despite the latest technology, the world has yet to crack the code for privacy and security online. But that isn't the only big problem we need to worry about. Hackers and robbers are tricking innocent users into giving up their private information as society becomes increasingly digital — and virtual currencies have a role in all of this. Cryptocurrencies smashed records in 2022, with the market topping $2 trillion for the first time ever. And while this has been greeted with excitement by current investors, it's made others more wary. Why? Because as the asset class grows, it becomes more …